Hometown Horror: New Orleans, LA

At 1140 Royal Street stands the LaLaurie Mansion — elegant, pale, and forever stained by what happened inside it. In April of 1834, a fire broke out in the home of socialite Delphine LaLaurie. When neighbors forced entry to help, they uncovered a scene so grotesque that even hardened 19th-century newspapers hesitated to describe it plainly.

According to reports published in The New Orleans Bee (April 11, 1834), enslaved individuals were discovered chained in the attic, subjected to prolonged torture and medical experimentation. Word spread quickly. A mob gathered. The mansion was ransacked brick by brick. LaLaurie fled the city—reportedly to Paris—leaving the structure to rot under the weight of what it had witnessed.

Nearly two centuries later, visitors still describe heavy footsteps in empty rooms, disembodied screams drifting down stairwells, and shadows crossing shuttered windows long after the gas lamps dim. In a city famous for jazz funerals and theatrical hauntings, this address feels different. It doesn’t perform. It presses.

Some buildings are beautiful.

Some are cursed.

And some simply remember.

-Frank

Come back next Wednesday for a new city and a new haunted location. The Mythos grows every week.

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